Various types of amphibious life, such as crabs and newts prefer amphibious environments. Newts, for example, need to breath air and, when placed in conventional water aquariums, typically need to ascend to a top water surface every time they have need or desire to breath air. Similarly, some species of crabs desire to periodically leave an underwater environment for a dry environment to permit their shells to dry. It would be desirable to provide structures and methods which permit amphibious life within an underwater aquarium environment to selectively leave the water environment for a dry environment to dry off, breath, or both.
One conventional method of providing a dry refuge for amphibious life within an aquarium is to provide an island structure which extends above the top surface of the water within the aquarium. As amphibious life desires or needs to leave the water environment for a dry environment, the amphibious life may climb onto a top surface of the island to breath, to dry off, or both. Unfortunately, such islands often substantially frustrate a primary purpose of aquariums, namely permitting individuals to observe closely the day-to-day activities of the amphibious life through the transparent sidewalls of an aquarium because of the height of the island. When the amphibious life is positioned on top of an island above the top surface of the water, the amphibious life cannot be easily seen through the transparent side walls of the aquarium.
Attempts have also been made to provide underwater air chambers positioned beneath the water top surface to permit amphibious life to be viewed while in a dry environment. These attempts, however, have been largely unsuccessful and have possessed certain limitations. For example, as an underwater chamber is lowered beneath the water top surface in the aquarium, buoyant forces act on the chamber which tend to cause the chamber to rise or to otherwise become unstable. To stabilize the chamber within the aquarium, the buoyant forces must be counteracted. The prior art has failed to provide a simple, cost-effective manner of counteracting the buoyant forces acting on an underwater air chamber.
An additional limitation associated with conventional underwater chambers is that they lack an ability to selectively control the respective amounts of air and water within the underwater chamber. For example, one prior art device includes a conventional pump which pumps air into various aquarium accessories, including an underwater air chamber. The pump delivers air at a constant rate and pressure to the various aquarium accessories which makes it difficult to control the amount of air or air pressure within the underwater air chamber without affecting the other aquarium accessories which receive air from the pump. Accordingly, there is a need to provide an underwater air chamber with an internal air pressure control which can be adjusted.
Conventional underwater air chambers also lack an ability to conveniently provide food for the amphibious life within the air chamber. It is both entertaining and educational to observe amphibious life eat. Moreover, some forms of amphibious life prefer to eat in a dry environment instead of an underwater environment. The prior art has failed to satisfactorily address the need for an underwater air chamber into which food for amphibious life may be conveniently provided.
An additional problem encountered by underwater air chambers of the past is the difficulty in luring amphibious life from the water environment into the dry environment. Accordingly, a need exists to provide a method of attracting amphibious life from a water environment into the dry environment.
Yet additional limitations of conventional underwater chambers are that they fail to adequately secure beach-forming material within the air chamber and they fail to provide an escape for debris from the underwater air chamber. As such, a yet additional need exists to provide an underwater air chamber which effectively retains beach-forming material within the air chamber and provides a method of removing unwanted debris from within the air chamber.